What Does it Mean to Listen?

To listen better, it helps to also be listening to the voices in our own heads. These are the ones that determine what we actually hear, how we interpret it, and what meaning we make from it.

In physics, we have standards of measurement. These are determined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology based in Colorado and Maryland. For instance, the way we know what a meter is is by measuring indirectly, by measuring a wavelength of a certain color light given off by a certain transition given off by certain electron around a cesium atom. If you put a certain number of these together, you get a meter. If you want to know how long a foot is, there's a certain definition to convert. This lets us speak the same language.

But when we talk to each other, the Bureau of Standards is in our heads. Each of us has our own, secluded not only from each other, but too often from ourselves as well. The way we measure words, and how it's different from others, from the very people we're speaking to, is an internal process that we hardly pay attention to.

Overly certain about school budgets

A few months into researching school budgets and discovering a statewide pattern of under-budgeting on private contractors and why it's happening, I was so thrilled when this one prominent organization responded to my email. “This is great research,” they said. “Let's get on the phone and talk about it.”

They were gracious and encouraging, and yet...

There was no flip of the switch, no moment of recognition, no meeting of minds. It turns out, their leader is a well-known public figure in education and has built a reputation off a different issue. He's passionate about the fact that enrollment has been declining in California Public Schools for more than a decade. He's been on that message, to his credit, for a long time. I don't fault him that.

But this new information should have registered more than it did for him, if he was really listening, at least in my opinion. The amount of money lost in my school district due to declining enrollment is around $10 million a year, according to our chief budget officer, with an overall expenditure budget of half a billion dollars. But the issue I was bringing to this consultant’s attention, the taxpayer dollars being siphoned off to benefit private investors, is between $15 and $25 million a year.

Something was stopping him from registering the urgency and priority of what we were bringing to his attention. It was an issue he clearly cared about deeply, but it wasn’t his issue.

When I asked if we're the “Bad Guys”

During last year's education strike at my district, I became frustrated hearing righteous teachers claiming to be on the side of love and justice, but misrepresenting certain facts to benefit their story, and bullying some teachers to sign their support. I was still on the side of the Union, but they were behaving like the side they were fighting against.

When I said to my colleague, admittedly in a moment of emotion, “How do we know we're not the bad guys?”, it was a sincere question. I wanted to make sure we were doing our part to not perpetuate the issues. In response, my colleague said, “Sky, if that's how you feel, maybe you're not the best person to represent our school.”

I was dismayed, because I felt like they didn't really hear me. Maybe they were sensitive to the fragility of our cause, and my questioning felt like a threat to that. Maybe they were carrying memories from years of being mistreated by the system, and so the issue appeared black and white. 

I get that. I wish my colleague had been able to hear what I was trying to convey, because it would have helped me and I think it would have helped our cause. For myself, I was wanting to feel greater integrity with the team and the process, and I think this was an important part of what we were doing. I wish my colleague had been able to recognize my uncertainty, not as a threat, but as an invitation for us all to grow from the experience. I wanted to win the strike also, but I wanted to make sure we accomplished our real goal: justice. I wish my colleague had been able to hear that.

Taking sides

There can be useful information even in small comments. When I wrote, “Somebody’s political party label tells you nothing about the life behind it,” I received a response from a friend, “They chose it,” by which the implication was that they chose to be Republican. To me, “they chose it,” means there's some clear distinction or identity that we can point to.

But to me, there's a difference between fighting for an issue and taking sides. When I hear someone say, “They chose to be Republican” or “They chose to be Democrat,” as if those words imply the judgment, I feel frustrated.

Do we know why we mean what we mean about Republicans or Democrats? Are we conscious of the carefully selected layers of evidence we are holding up in our minds that makes it obvious that the other side is wrong? I get it, I have my own reasons, but what are yours?

Here's why it's important. Like the standards of meters and feet, if we don't expose our measuring stick, we can't actually compare. I think I form my most damning judgments of other people based on cherry-picked memories of things they've done or said, and I probably couldn’t even name what many of them are. And they do the same for me.

I come from the city that is home to the new tech elite who are being sued for privacy violations in various states in the Midwest. To those Midwesterners, I'm part of that system, guilty by geographical association. Am I up in arms around privacy issues? No, I’m not. I think its important, but I am not making it a priority for me.

Do I agree with Sam Altman? Do I identify as part of the same Club with Peter Thiel? No. I think of my city in my area as being the birthplace of hippies and the Grateful Dead, not the Surveillance State.

The way I see it, if I want someone from Georgia to relieve me of association with those people and those situations, if I want to not be blamed as part of the surveillance state elite, I have to be willing to also relieve them of association with things that I've cherry-picked to believe are their main qualities. Are they fighting back against private prisons in their state that are housing immigrants without trial? Maybe not, just like I'm not fighting back against the surveillance state here in my house.

What we bring into the foreground in our own minds is a process that happens in the darkness of our own head. If we don't take the time to listen to that constant voice of filter when we're listening to the news or to each other, it makes it impossible to have a common standard of measurement. It makes it impossible to do anything other than disagree.